Hamas Has Nothing But Contempt For Its Defenders

By Seth Mandel

Friday, January 30, 2025

 

However much contempt one has for the Hamas cheering squads in the West and its stenographers in the media, it will never surpass the contempt Hamas itself has for them.

 

The latest example: Hamas has finally admitted that when Israel claimed to have eliminated senior Hamas official Muhammad Deif over the summer, the Israelis were telling the truth. The IDF had announced Deif’s death in August, though the strike that killed him was delivered in July.

 

When Deif was killed is highly relevant to where Deif was killed, as well as why Hamas refused to acknowledge it during active hostilities. Here’s the New York Times:

 

“The strike that killed Mr. Deif also killed at least 90 Palestinians on the ground, the Gaza health ministry said, hitting within the Al-Mawasi area of southern Gaza, a part of a humanitarian zone designated by Israel. The health ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its death tolls.”

 

So Deif, a major Hamas commander and next to Yahya Sinwar probably the most important target inside Gaza, was using a humanitarian zone as a shield. We don’t know how many people were killed in the strike because the numbers come from Hamas, which was lying about who was there in the first place. But there is no way around it now: The strike that media like the New York Times covered as an Israeli bombing of civilians in a designated humanitarian zone turns out to have been a legitimate strike of a legitimate target and any collateral damage was unambiguously the work of Hamas not the fault of Israel.

 

More from the Times:

 

“The zone was a large expanse filled with hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians, many living in makeshift shelters, according to the United Nations. Israel said that Hamas was operating from the targeted compound within the zone.”

 

“Israel said”? But I just read that confirmed in the New York Times. So maybe it should be “The New York Times said that Hamas was operating from the targeted compound within the zone.”

 

On the other hand, the Times was only reporting what had been confirmed by the spokesman for Hamas. So the sentence should read: “Hamas said that Hamas was operating from the targeted compound within the zone.”

 

Let’s be clear, then, on exactly what was happening through the war: Israel was constantly moving large amounts of civilians out of harms way while Hamas was scheming to put those same civilians in grave danger. Hundreds of thousands, we are told, were moved into the humanitarian zone. That is many times the 25,000 or so civilian deaths in Gaza caused by the war. In Mawasi, we now know, Israel was able to save most but not all of the displaced Gazans from Deif’s attempt to get them killed.

 

Now that hostilities have paused, Hamas is taking stock of what it has and what it has lost. It has lost Deif, but it has gained a bunch of useful idiots for whom it has nothing but contempt. Hamas was very happy to have its advocates repeat its propaganda like caged parrots, of course. And it appreciates the ability to direct foreign media with a wave of its hand. But that very process assures that it will not have much respect for those doing its bidding.

 

Hamas is much more self-aware than some people seem to think. It knows how evil it is. It knows how unworthy of moral support it is. It knows that it represents man’s inhumanity to man. It knows that every word out of the mouths of its propagandists is a lie. Hamas needs its Western supporters to trust it, but it would never be so foolish as to believe what it says.

 

For the past 15 months, Hamas has been leading its supporters and its fans and every anti-Zionist with a public profile out on a limb. Now it has sawed off that limb. Watch as all these fools learn absolutely nothing for the next round.